Bug Squad

Two 'streaks on a sedum. Sounds like a song, doesn't it? Actually there were two gray hairstreaks (Strymon melinus) on a sedum today in the Hagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a half-acre bee friendly garden on Bee Biology Road, University of California, Davis. Make that two 'streaks and a honey bee.

With all the talk about honey bee nutrition lately, just how much food does a honey bee colony need and how far can the workers fly to find find it?

It was a Gulf Fritillary kind of day last Saturday, Sept. 21 at the Bohart Museum of Entomology, UC Davis. That would be Agraulis vanillae. Visitors to the open house saw Gulf Frit eggs, caterpillars, chrysalids and adults.

Check out that moustache! Once you see the powerfully built robber fly of the Asilidae family, with its huge eyes, short proboscis and bristly "moustache," you won't forget it. It's an aggressive predator known for its speed, its strength, and its power.

University of Minnesota honey bee researcher Marla Spivak, in her TED talk on honey bee health, referred to bees as "flower feeders." That they are. Flower feeders. As are other pollinators from butterflies to beetles to bats.